In this issue

This week a press release announced that VeriSign and Red Hat signed an agreement to deliver trust services to Apache/Linux customers. The release explains that VeriSign will now issue Global Server ID certificates to Apache users, even those not based in the USA. Global Server ID certificates were designed when exports of strong cryptography from the USA were more controlled. A site with such a certificate would cause some older export-crippled browsers to renegotiate with full strength cryptography.

In the past, VeriSign had only been able to issue these certificates to companies in designated industries, in a limited set of countries, running approved server software. Apache was not approved, but some Apache-based commercial servers were. However, now that full-strength browsers from Microsoft and Netscape are available to nearly all countries, the importance of using Global Server ID certificates has diminished. More details of their announcement are available at the Thawte ApacheSecure Center

InformationWeek looks at Apache and SSL in "Open Source Moves To The Mainstream". The article discusses the secure server survey from e-soft which shows Apache with 63% market share but notes that the "battle over E-commerce territory has been a little more difficult for open source, perhaps an indication that security-minded companies prefer to use commercial products".

Linux Magazine interviews Tim O'Reilly in "A Conversation With the Man Behind the Animal Books". The article discusses the evolving open source industry and pays particular attention to Apache. Tim O'Reilly is quoted as saying " I think Apache plays an enormously important role here. Because it has a dominant market share, it keeps the Internet open. I think it's more important for Apache to have dominant market share than for Linux. If Linux is dominant too, that's better, but I'd hate to see us lose Apache. That's a really important battleground."

The April Netcraft Server Survey shows another gain for Apache amongst the 14 million sites surveyed. Now over 64% of Internet servers run Apache or servers based on Apache.

A short review of the new book "Apache Server Commentary" is available. The book is aimed at developers and contains source code listings of the Apache server.

UserLand hosts an interesting open forum about commercial software, which originally started as an email discussion between Dave Winer and Brian Behlendorf. In Dave's own comments he picks out some of the discussion and his own point of view, accusing Apache of being boring.

LinuxPlanet have a new feature about Apache, "Using the Apache CVS Repository". The article explains how the Apache developers use a master code repository for the work on Apache 1.3 and 2.0. Anyone interested in keeping up to date with the cutting edge developments of Apache can use the described methods to maintain their own copy of the source tree, whilst easily keeping with the changes being made by the Apache developers.

GB direct have a case study on WAP-Enabling a Website with PHP3. The article shows the design decisions they made using the MySQL database and PHP scripting lanugage. They show that interactive sites can be simplified by separating data management from the presentation, as they feed CGI script output through PHP before returning it to the client. This has enabled them to easily add support for browsing using a mobile phone (using WAP and WML), although they found that the current technology will leave phone users extremely frustrated.

This occasional section contains short announcements of jobs which require significant Apache experience. To see more jobs or find out how to submit your vacancy visit the Apache Week Jobs section.

Entry Level Technical Support (Newbury, UK)

We are seeking a technical support specialist to provide first line web server support via email and phone. An excellent customer manner, prior technical support, UNIX, and web server experience a bonus.

Configuration Management Engineer (USA)

MP3.com is seeking a Configuration Engineer to manage our code and data and assure new software is designed so it will both scale and can be easy to manage. You will work in a pure Unix environment where we use open-source tools: Linux, Perl, CVS, MySql, Apache.

Internal Applications Engineer (USA)

MP3.com seeks an engineer who loves building out infrastructure. You will work in a team environment to enhance internal business web applications. You'll combine the potent ingredients of Linux, mySQL, Apache and Perl with your imagination to address our internal application needs.

Sr. Web Programmer (USA, San Diego)

MP3.com, Inc. is looking for Sr. Web Programmers. you will be working on the content management and web publication applications at MP3.com. These applications are responsible for managing our ever growing databases of artists, songs, CDs and publishing this data to our web servers.

Apache Site: www.apache.org/httpd
Release: 1.3.12 (Released 25^th February 2000) (local download sites)
Beta: None
Alpha: 2.0a2 (Released 31^st March 2000) (local download sites)

Apache 1.3.12 is the current stable release. Users of Apache 1.3.11 and earlier on Unix and Windows systems should upgrade to this version. Read the Guide to 1.3.12, the Guide to 1.3.11 for information about changes between 1.3.9 and 1.3.11 and the Guide to 1.3.9 for information about changes between 1.3.6 and 1.3.9.

A third alpha of Apache 2.0 is expected to be available this weekend.

Every day at Apache Week we receive many requests to help with individual Apache problems. Whilst we can't respond to every request we are interested to hear about particular problems you are having with Apache so that we can write about the things that more commonly occur. We are equally interested in any success stories you might want to share, how you came across pit falls and what you did to solve them. Mail the editors at editors@apacheweek.com.

The O'Reilly Network recently started an Apache forum where users can request help and talk about their experiences with Apache.